Burning in the highlights at grade 0/00 should get some tone in the area but it may be a bit flat without the sparkle. One tip by Les McLean is to burn in highlights with grade 5; if there is any hint of detail in there then the grade 5 filter will bring it out. Its worth a try.

In general, unless the highlights of the neg you are working with are very dense, your base exposure should get you the highlight detail you want. You control the shadow rendition with changes in contrast.
What filter are you using for the base exposure?
All that said, you can burn with whatever filtration does the trick, which is one of the nice things about VC papers.
If the highlights are too dense in the neg, you may want to consider flashing the paper to get some tone into the highlights instead of complicated burning.

If the neg in question is an exception and you can normally print highlights without burning-in or at least get something on the paper then that's fine. However if highlights are always a big problem then it might be worth looking at your development times. Unprintable highlights at exposures that print lower zones OK suggests over-development.

Try progressively reducing development times for your films by say 10% if development times are less than 10 mins and maybe 15% if times are much over 10 mins to see if this makes a difference. Then if it's not enough and it may not be enough reduce by another 10%

Worth a try. A 10% reduction should show some difference and isn't going to result in a disaster of thin negs

It sounds as though you are suggesting using a very soft (0/00) grade instead of burning in order to retain highlights. The problem is that this will reduce local contrast throughout the print, making it flatter and with less snap. The advantage of burning is that it allows you to reduce global contrast, by burning the lighter areas, without affecting local contrast.

It sounds as though you are suggesting using a very soft (0/00) grade instead of burning in order to retain highlights. The problem is that this will reduce local contrast throughout the print, making it flatter and with less snap. The advantage of burning is that it allows you to reduce global contrast, by burning the lighter areas, without affecting local contrast.

I was only thinking to use 0/00 after base exposure was made either with a filter or no filter.

Base exposure: With or without filter which results in no highlights.
+
Expose with 0/00 only, after the base exposure.

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It sounds like you had a very strong contrast situation, and that you have overdeveloped the highilghts. You are on the right track with using compensating development (5min agitation), but your development time for this neg may have to be shorter.

Instead of using very soft filters, which tend to produce low local contrast in your print, I recommend practicing flashing, which helps preserve local contrast better than using lower contrast filtration.

The idea of burning in the sky with Grade 5 filtration is also a good one, because it does add some texture to the print, if there is tonal variation in the highlights of the negative.

Last edited by Thomas Bertilsson; 10-22-2012 at 08:07 AM. Click to view previous post history.

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Just watch out for any excessive grain that may suddenly appear in otherwise smooth areas, such as the sky or clouds, when burning in with harder grades. While burning in with various grades is very useful, I feel that if you can burn it with the grade of the base exposure, it can make the print less complicated: both to make, and to appreciate.

After establishing the base exposure to 25.4 sec, I found nothing on the paper for highlights. Aparently I start to burn for 9.9 sec with all those gymnastics.

My question is can I use 0/00 filter to print highlights without all those gymnastics. Will it work? Its not split-grade, I just curious about using 0/00 filter to get highlights on the paper...

Yes you can use that 0/00 filter. You can also just use 'white' light for the burn, only the green part of the white light has a real effect on the highlights. The high contrast filter that blocks blue light (#5) will have little effect on the dense portion of highlights.